hounds until she ran into Gillian Arm- strong. In the hubbub, it was impossible to hear what she was saying. Instead, as the cameras flashed, I watched her easy smile and thought about a story that Armstrong had told me on the phone the night before. "I ran the first answer print of 'Oscar and Lucindà at the lab for the color grader, Arthur Cambridge, whom I worked with for many years," she said. "You sit in the dark. You watch the film at mute, with no sound at all. No one had ever heard of or seen Cate before." She went on, 'W è re halfway through the :film when Arthur said, 'Is she a nice person? It just comes through that she is.' I thought, Isn't that great? He's the first audience." After we took our seats, a tall, hand- some older man in a blue sports coat stopped beside us. "Hello, Cate," he said. It was Keating himself: The lights dimmed. "I love it when it goes dark," she said. "It's like a slumber party." She settled back to be, for once, a member of the audience. The show had a fine set of impudent lyrics and an inventive stag- ing; it seemed to release Blanchett's ro- bust sense of humor. The sultry face of the glamour pages gave up its famous composure; the poised lips dissolved into guffaws. Blanchett rocked in her seat. At one point, in "Freaky," a song about Al- exander Downer, the current Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs, who be- came a figure of fun after he was photo- graphed in fishnet stockings and wom- en's shoes for a charity event, Blanchett was surprised to find herself part of the joke. Downer was played by the show's lyricist and composer, Casey Bennetto, a large man with a hairy back who swanned onstage in the tight-fitting garter-belted mufti of a dominatrix. He looked, more or less, like a bratwurst in heels. Bennetto worked the room with gusto: I'm a greasy-cheek freak A leader of tomorrow, But I won't be 'round next week 'Cause I'm too freaky. As he marched up the aisle loudly la- menting his volatile career, he came upon Blanchett. He looked at her for a split second, then flopped into her lap and, in- voking the singer Barry White, ad-libbed, "It's S.T.C./When you're next to me." The audience, and Blanchett, howled. When the show was over, she made her way toward the exit. Just before we got there, Blanchett was asked to return to be photographed. When I turned around, she had vanished, swallowed up by the milling crowd. For a moment, I thought f d lost her; then it occurred to me to fol- low the popping flashbulbs, which, like the landing lights of an airstrip, led inevi- tably to Blanchett. About forty-five min- utes later, we made our way back through the theatre, through the dressing rooms, past the laundry room, the wardrobe, and out into the rain-cooled air. Blanchett had made a reservation at an Italian restaurant she liked. From the table, she phoned home to check on the boys, which led to a discussion of par- enthood. "I find it's made me more eco- nomical, more focussed, more generous, less self-centered," she said. "f m grate- ful for it." She went on, "I remember em- barking on 'Veronica Guerin' after Dash was born, thinking I have nothing to give this project because fm so filled up with this creature we've created. But fve be- come a better actor because of it. I think parenthood is knowing what cards you've got and then throwing them up in the air. You need to let go. It's like when you ex- perience intense grief-you often have the deepest insights because the dead wood's been cleared out. When you're ab- solutely exhausted, somehow the work you've been consciously trying to do gets done on a different, deeper level." Earlier, Upton had told me that Blanchett was "in a constant battle between optimism and pessimism-the futility of all the effort." As Blanchett tucked into her fagottini di carne, I asked her about this. 'We sort of liberate one another from melancholy," she said of her husband. "At least, he cer- tainly does with me. The only thing that gets in the way is lack of time." Nonethe- less, they have considered having another child. Just that day, Blanchett said, Upton had taken a Pilates class at home with a fe- male instructor who had a newborn baby. Blanchett held the baby while Upton ran through his stretching regime. "I was in my pajamas," she said. "I held this seven- week-old baby. He came out looking at me like 'Don't.' And I did." Blanchett looked away for a moment. "The reality of what three children would be like?" she said. She turned back to her pasta. 'We like a bit of chaos," she said. . Headline in the Narragansett (R.l) Times. LITERARCY GRANT BENEFITS LOCAL STUDENTS But not the local press. The ODDEST MOMENTS ARE æ 85 THE most DELICIOUS. - ..,. r{ . -' l ; ' ) / *'J uJL I ] . 'I," '9 ----ø .l . 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